At the pillar's base: Islam, Morocco, and education in the Qarawiyin Mosque, 1912--2000

My dissertation explores the development of a concept of traditional Islamic education in colonial and post-colonial Morocco. The French colonial administration (1912--1956) embarked upon a classificatory study of Morocco and implemented a web of policies that sought to ensnare all aspects of Moroccan life, some of which were to "evolve" and others which were deemed "traditional" were to be preserved, each according to the measure that its "evolution" or preservation would increase the French administration's ability to control its colonial acquisition. Foremost among the elements of "traditional" Moroccan life were the curricular and spatial dimensions of advanced Islamic education in the Qarawiyin Mosque in the medina of Fez. The colonial administration's preservationist practices were intended to work upon both the Qarawiyin students' minds through control of the educational curriculum and upon their bodies through regulation of their housing and the space of their studies. After Moroccan Independence from French rule, the post-colonial monarchy replicated certain colonial forms and practices of power. Over the course of his reign (1962--1999) Hassan II increasingly strove to revive the significance of a pre-colonial Morocco in the post-colonial period. In doing so, however, he revived a pre-colonial past that was itself entangled with ideas of "tradition" devised by the French colonial administration. With the constitutional establishment of the king as the Commander of the Faithful, religious scholars ( 'ulama`) constituted a central base of the monarchy's legitimacy, and thus the education of future religious scholars was of primary importance to Hassan II's monarchy. In his efforts to generate a cadre of ulama who would support the monarchy, Hassan II revived an Islamic educational program in the Qarawiyin Mosque that had been developed by French colonial officials. However, rather than being a total reenactment of a colonial educational program, the revived educational program took on new meanings in the specific political, social and economic contexts of post-colonial Morocco.;...